I posted this outfit last week but man, we need to break down the Kate Spade New York x UO collaboration, exclusively available at Urban Outfitters.
Full candor: I learned of this collection entirely too late, especially for someone who lives for a limited edition brand x brand collaboration. (Shout out to Gutes Guterman via Alyssa Vingan, creator and host of The New Guarde podcast for bringing the collab to attention.) I get the sense that Kate Spade New York x UO is still under the radar for its early SATC Charlotte York-ish market sector as all the colorways are available and frequently on promotion.
Because we all know us bitches – the Charlotte York/Blair Waldorf styled, acid bright fever dream variety, you know the ones – gobble that shit up.
The collaboration offers a singular canvas style handbag in a baguette-like shape; refer to below photo for scale. There is one interior pocket. The handbag fits a sunglasses case, phone, set of keys, and ID and credit card.
Where things get really juicy are the prints and colorways. And I mean juicy, peep that stripe of acid hued bright colors.
The stripe is a variation of one issued by the Kate Spade brand in the late 90s. I distinctly recall the iconic Sam, or rather, the Canal Street knock offs of the Sam. Several girls in my high school class brought home fake versions of this bag from the choir’s school trip to Manhattan in this pattern:
I was not impressed with the bags but especially not when a classmate who went on said trip, clued me in on the handbags counterfeit nature. Even if they were real, the particular colors in the handbag were not and still are not appealing to me.
On the other hand, the colors from the updated version are quite palatable. I love not only each of the colors on their own but as a combination, they also look fantastic. The bag could have been better when it comes to marrying up the stripes. You will notice that the colors are not aligned from the large front and back panels to the sides and bottom piece.
Price-wise, the Kate Spade New York x UO collaboration is competitive. They are regularly priced at 198 dollars but as long as they have been on my radar, they have not been regularly priced. I bought my stripe version on promotion for less than one hundred dollars with an extra fifteen percent off as a new Urban Outfitters online customer. (Could it be that I have not ordered anything online from UO since…2009 when I ordered a red Lacoste polo dress? Indeed!) Since then, I have not seen them priced over the low hundreds and promotions have the prices dipping around sixty.